When Will Voters Say Enough?
Both major parties have a problem with sexual predators. Why do voters keep voting for them?
Democrats in Maine were finally able to convince an alleged sexual predator to remove himself as a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine. It took the seventh credible accusation of sexual violence for local and national Democrats to abandon him and for the candidate to finally get the memo, though based on his withdrawal letter today.1
Meanwhile, Republicans renamed an airport after a sexual predator they have thrice nominated for President.
I’ve written before about how badly this cycle’s primaries have gone in more than one state.2 Platner is just the latest and messiest entry. But if you think this is a uniquely Platner problem, you haven’t been paying attention to California, where Eric Swalwell went from leading gubernatorial contender to a man facing an active Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department investigation and a Manhattan DA inquiry in the span of about two weeks. Four women. Allegations ranging from unsolicited explicit photos to two separate accusations of rape, one of them describing being choked unconscious. Swalwell resigned his House seat rather than face an expulsion vote. He still says none of it happened.
And then there’s Trump. A jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.3 The Access Hollywood tape is not a rumor, it’s a recording, in his own voice, of him describing exactly what he thinks he’s entitled to do to women. More than two dozen women have accused him of some form of sexual misconduct over the decades. He was stayed the Republican nominee in 2016 despite calls for the GOP to abandon him for Mike Pence. He was nominated twice more in 2020 and 2024. The American people twice elected him President despite knowing this.4
So let’s not pretend this is a red team problem or a blue team problem. It’s a bigger problem. Both parties have, at some point in the last decade, looked at credible and serious allegations of sexual violence against a candidate and decided the polling, the fundraising, or the ideological fit mattered more than the allegations themselves. Sanders backed Platner early and loudly. National Democrats backed Swalwell as a rising star for years despite what colleagues are now saying they suspected. Republican primary voters handed Trump the nomination in 2016, 2020 and again in 2024 with all of it already on the record.
This isn’t really about Platner or Swalwell or Trump individually anymore. It’s about what both parties are willing to tolerate when a candidate is useful to them. The pattern is identical on both sides: deny, deflect, wait for the base to get bored, and only act once continuing to defend the guy becomes more politically costly than cutting him loose. Nobody drew a line before the allegations became unmanageable. They drew it when the allegations became unwinnable.
Party leaders will not fix this. They’ve had every opportunity and every incentive to fix it, and they haven’t, because the incentive that actually moves them is winning the seat. That leaves voters. Primary voters are the only people in this system with the power to make “credible allegations of sexual violence” disqualifying before the general election, before the endorsements roll in, before the sunk cost gets too large for anyone with a title to walk away from. That means asking harder questions in June instead of expressing shock in July. It means not talking yourself into the outsider candidate or the rising star because the alternative seems worse.
Both parties have shown you they will nominate these men and defend them for as long as they can get away with it. The only people who can actually say enough is enough are the ones filling out the ballot.
Oystergrüppenführer has no shame for how horrible a person he is
Not exactly a banner year for candidate vetting, and Maine won't be the last state to learn that the hard way before November. See: Colorado
And knowing <waves hands around>